Petals of Time
by June
Summary: It’s the ultimate cliché in MandC (or rather, Aubrey-Maturin series) fan fiction: a twentieth century girl, aged nineteen, miraculously ends up in 1805 and sails off to the East Indies posing as a fifteen year old Ship’s Boy on board H.M.S. Surprise. Alon
1. Petals of Time, chapter 1: A Long Night

Title: Petals of Time

Author: June

Rating: M

Summary: It's the ultimate cliché in MandC (or rather, Aubrey-Maturin series) fan fiction: a twentieth century girl, aged nineteen, miraculously ends up in 1805 and sails off to the East Indies posing as a fifteen year old Ship's Boy on H.M.S. Surprise. Along the way she encounters war in all its gruesome reality, copious amounts of weevils, and a certain blue-eyed Captain who upon the discovery of her secret shows more than a little interest. So, yes, it's the ultimate cliché. Why write it anyway? Because I've been wanting to indulge myself in this story, and I hope to be able to write it well.

Chapter: 1?

Pairings: eventually Jack/OFC

Disclaimer: don't own any of Patrick O'Brian marvelous characters, do own Joanne I suppose.

Author's Notes: There's no need to tell me the OFC in this story could well be named Mary Sue instead of Joanne. I actually considered naming her Mary Sue in order to forego any comments pointing out the obvious. I'm also sure I could come up with something more original than this eternally rehashed and not to mention implausible plot, and in fact I have under another pen name, but I just wanted to have some fun writing this. As for the technicalities – this is mixed bookverse and movieverse. Some of it is H.M.S. Surprise (the book), but a lot of it also isn't, and there will probably be some movieverse seeping in here and there, as well as possible mix-ups of timelines and chronology.

Chapter 1: A long night

The terminal at Luton airport was never a very joyful place to be, but with the prospect of an unspecified amount of time to while away there it seemed gloomier than ever. With a sigh that sounded almost like a curse, Joanne dropped her bag on the floor next to the lunch room table and flopped down on the seat. Brushing a strand of dark blond hair out of her eyes, she lifted the carton cup to her lips. The coffee tasted bitter, like the delay due to weather conditions she and a few hundred other passengers were experiencing at the moment. The lunch room was bustling with activity, unwilling customers taking up all the tables around her and the din of voices creating an endless murmur that seemed to echo off the terminal walls.

She wasn't surprised when one of the many voices addressed her. "Mind if I sit here?"

Looking up she met the gaze of a bespectacled elderly man. Grey suit, blue tie, carton cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other, he was the prototype businessman.

"Not at all," she replied.

The man sat down at her table and grimaced as he took his first sip of coffee. Despite her mood, Joanne couldn't help but grin. "Not the best coffee, eh?"

The man smiled back. "I'd like to say I've had worse, but I'm not sure I have, actually."

It was the beginning of small talk. Anything to pass some of the many minutes of Luton gloom that lay ahead of her, Joanne thought. Besides, the man seemed nice and, after small talk turned into bigger talk, proved to be rather interesting. He had traveled a lot and knew how to tell a story.

Another coffee and a diet coke later the attention had focused on her. "That's a lovely necklace," Mr. Wooding complimented.

"Thanks," Joanne said, and then added for no reason, "I was given it a long time ago."

A very long time ago, yes, but she remembered it so well. The moonlight on the water outside the stern windows, the creaks and squeeks of the nightly ship, its wake lit up with green fluorescence trailing off into the dark distance. Most of all the, the look of delight in his blue eyes as she'd unwrapped the wonderful gift.

Involuntarily, her hand reached up to touch the small pendant. The delicate garnet flower petals, carefully arranged and set in rose gold and dangling off a matching chain meant the world to her. It was all she had left now, the necklace, and her memories.

"It looks very old," Mr. Wooding said.

"Yes. It's Georgian. From 1805." Two hundred years ago. It was still hard to fathom, Joanne thought, even now.

"An heirloom?"

Joanne shook her head. "No, it's... it's a long story." She offered an apologetic smile.

"We've got a lot of time," Mr. Wooding replied.

That was true. The wind still howling around the building incessantly and the crash and thunder of lightning could be heard in the distance. At this rate it would be hours before they would be able to fly. Joanne considered this. She had not told her story to anyone, sure as she was that no one would ever bother to believe it. She was sure that Mr. Wooding would not believe it, either, but did that matter? She would probably never see him again after flights would resume. And it would be nice, she thought, to reminiscence. To remember. To him it would simply be a good story, told on a long night of stormy weather in an airport terminal that felt empty despite the vast crowd of stranded travelers like herself filling it.

"All right," she said at last. "I'll tell you the story. It's going to be a bit fantastic, though."

"Fantastic sounds good," he said, smiling. "I'm all ears."

Closing her eyes briefly, Joanne remembered the feeling off those first moments, both 14 and 214 years ago now. She remembered the precise second realization hit her, so painfully at the time, and the fear and confusion that came with, and she began to tell her story.


	2. Petals of Time, chapter 2: The Crown

Title: Petals of Time

Author: June

Rating: M

Summary: It's the ultimate cliché in MandC (or rather, Aubrey-Maturin series) fan fiction: a twentieth century girl, aged nineteen, miraculously ends up in 1805 and sails off to the East Indies posing as a fifteen year old Ship's Boy on H.M.S. Surprise. Along the way she encounters war in all its gruesome reality, copious amounts of weevils, and a certain blue-eyed Captain who upon the discovery of her secret shows more than a little interest. So, yes, it's the ultimate cliché. Why write it anyway? Because I've been wanting to indulge myself in this story, and I hope to be able to write it well.

Chapter: 2?

Pairings: eventually Jack/OFC

Disclaimer: don't own any of Patrick O'Brian marvelous characters, do own Joanne I suppose.

Author's Notes: There's no need to tell me the OFC in this story could well be named Mary Sue instead of Joanne. I actually considered naming her Mary Sue in order to forego any comments pointing out the obvious. I'm also sure I could come up with something more original than this eternally rehashed and not to mention implausible plot, and in fact I have under another pen name, but I just wanted to have some fun writing this. As for the technicalities – this is mixed bookverse and movieverse. Some of it is H.M.S. Surprise (the book), but a lot of it also isn't, and there will probably be some movieverse seeping in here and there, as well as possible mix-ups of timelines and chronology.

Chapter 2: The Crown

The first thing she noticed were the sails. Hundreds of patches of brilliant white, some triangular and near, some mere specks in the distance, reflecting the sunlight in the port. It was impossible, of course, for less than a second before the dark water had carried nothing but the bright coloured ferry to France and the great clunk of grey iron that was one of the Royal Navy's biggest aircraft carriers.

The strangest thing of it all was that there had been nothing strange about the moment. Nothing to distinguish that one split second in which everything, her entire world, had changed from the second preceding it or the second that followed. There had been no thunder, no whirlwind, no inexplicable pull that grabbed and her and spit her out in some undefined past time. She hadn't lost consciousness or fallen asleep to wake up in this strange place. Perhaps she had blinked, but if she had, she had not noticed it. All Joanne had noticed was that suddenly everything she knew was gone.

The first ten minutes or so she merely stood and gaped. The people walking down the dock were different. It wasn't simply that their clothes were different, old-fashioned, Jane-Austen-like, but their faces were different. Strange, unknown. She couldn't put her finger on what it was that made them so different from the faces she knew, for they seemed at once more drawn and worriesome as well more innocent, somehow. She gaped at the many sailors running about the place, the ships, the sounds of the dockyard and the smell of tar around her, the salty and most of all clean taste of the air, taking all of it in, in utter disbelieve. After she had ruled out the possibilities of a film set and the most eleborate prank in the history of candid camera, came the fear.

Joanne had come to Portsmouth to visit an internet friend, a girl her own age, nineteen, whom she had met on a penpal website and with whom she had exchanged emails for nearly six months prior to her trip. They had planned to take the three-hour ferry to Calais together and spend a day shopping there. It would've been an adventure, but the adventure Joanne found herself unwillingly caught up in now was much more than she had ever bargained for.

The next two hours or so she spend sitting on the cobble stones by the side of the street, staring at the spectacle in front of her. The ferry building, gone, the fish and chips stand, gone, the buildings from before, gone, everything replaced with dockyard activity such as it must have been in the days of that old Portsmouth museum ship, the Victory, which her friend Louise had told her they must visit while she was in town. The ship wasn't there now, either, of course. Joanne sat and waited for things to change back to normal, but they didn't. At last the sun began to set on the horizon and she got up, fear weighing heavily on her empty stomach, and dusted off her pair of baggy blue jeans. Het throat constricted painfully and she quickly took a few deep breaths to keep herself from crying.

After another minute or so she felt ready to take in her immediate surroundings again, this time with a more practical aim: she needed to find a refuge. She found it in one of the buildings behind her, which she had noticed as soon as she had gotten off the National Express bus on the docks in her own time. "The Lady Hamilton", the small hotel and pub had been called back when everything had been normal. Now the heavy sign outside the door read "The Crown," but it was still the same place. She pushed open the door and entered the dim-lit pub.

"Hello lad," the thick-set woman behind the bar called as she approached. Joanne was too confused to be insulted, and it wasn't until she had settled into a small bedroom up two flights of stairs that she realised her jeans, shirt and half-long hair apparently made people almost automatically classify her as a boy in this age. For that was the one thing that had become clear to her rather quickly: somehow, impossibly, she had ended up in a time not her own, hundreds of years ago. Reasoning that this glitch in time had to be rectified sooner or later, she figured that if she could stick it out here for a little while she would just as suddenly find herself back in her own day.

Having no money, it cost Joanne her thin gold necklace, a gift from her parents and very dear to her, to secure room and boarding for five days. But as she knew so little about the age she now found herself temporarily stranded in that she did not even know whether she had been ripped off or given a deal, she felt the room was more than necessary to pass the waiting time until she would return to 2005. To calm her still raging nerves, she half-heartedly convinced herself it could not possibly be very long before that would happen.

Even in the dead of night the docks were far from quiet, with cries and laughs of the people in the streets, often drunken sailors, filling the air. Joanne slept restlessly, waking every hour or so and feeling alone and sorry for herself. The next morning however her mood changed considerably. The sun was shining, making the water of the port outside her window sparkle happily, and the breakfast prepared for her by the inn-keeper's wife, though somewhat coarse to her twentieth century taste, provided some much-needed filling of her growling stomach. Convinced that she would soon go home, Joanne decided she might as well take some time to explore this old city.


	3. Petals of Time, chapter 3: Ship's Boy

Title: Petals of Time

Author: June

Rating: M

Summary: It's the ultimate cliché in MandC (or rather, Aubrey-Maturin series) fan fiction: a twentieth century girl, aged nineteen, miraculously ends up in 1805 and sails off to the East Indies posing as a fifteen year old Ship's Boy on board H.M.S. Surprise. Along the way she encounters war in all its gruesome reality, copious amounts of weevils, and a certain blue-eyed Captain who upon the discovery of her secret shows more than a little interest. So, yes, it's the ultimate cliché. Why write it anyway? Because I've been wanting to indulge myself in this story, and I hope to be able to write it well.

Chapter: 3?

Pairings: eventually Jack/OFC

Disclaimer: don't own any of Patrick O'Brian marvelous characters, do own Joanne I suppose.

Author's Notes: There's no need to tell me the OFC in this story could well be named Mary Sue instead of Joanne. I actually considered naming her Mary Sue in order to forego any comments pointing out the obvious. I'm also sure I could come up with something more original than this eternally rehashed and not to mention implausible plot, and in fact I have under another pen name, but I just wanted to have some fun writing this. As for the technicalities – this is mixed bookverse and movieverse. Some of it is H.M.S. Surprise (the book), but a lot of it also isn't, and there will probably be some movieverse seeping in here and there, as well as possible mix-ups of timelines and chronology.

Chapter 3: Ship's Boy

With The Crown as her starting point, Joanne spend the next three days discovering the city and quickly grew delighted with her temporary surroundings. At the same time however, her worries mounted and by the end of the third day she was extremely anxious. The problem was that she was still here, or there, depending on one's point of view, so many ages before her own, and there had been no sign whatsoever that this was going to change any time soon. What was more, she only had two nights left at the inn.

She needed a job. It was as simple and as complicated as that. She needed a job, and money, the money of this time, not the worthless paper bank notes and coins of her own century, to support herself as she waited for her return home. She started her quest for employment by inquiring at the inn, but inn-keeper resolutely told her they didn't need anyone, no, not even for dish-washing or cleaning. Still under the assumption that Joanne belonged to the other sex – an assumption she had done nothing to dispell by telling him her name was 'Jo' - he suggested she try at the dockyard.

Upon inquiring there, the dockyard workers took one look at her small and lithe frame and told her no. All of that day and the next she hunted for a job, any job, but her search proved fruitless. No one would hire her as the 15 year-old boy they took her for, and upon asking about servant jobs for an imaginary sister the answer invariably included the dreaded question "has she got any references?" Which, of course, she didn't.

The last day of her stay at The Crown, Joanne stayed out after dusk, something she had avoided previously. Still going from inn to pub and back down the darkened streets, she passed many of the drunken sailors she had so often heard outside her window. From dooropenings and windows, ragged whores and occasionally somewhat more civil-looking ladies of pleasure called for them. Joanne's heart grew cold as she realised she might be staring at her immediate future if she did not find a way to stay off the streets soon. For the millionth time the past few days she prayed and wished with all her might that she could go home, back to her own time. A buxomly woman calling out from one of the bawdy houses snapped her out of her misery for a split second. "Eh you, young'un, come in and have some fun! The press gang's about you know, we'll here keep you safe!" Her manic laughter followed Joanne down the street. A slow rain began to drip from the black-clouded sky and despairing, she returned to The Crown, feeling more alone and lost than ever before in her life.

The sadness must have shown in her face, because as she stepped into the warmth and light of the inn, prepared to go to her room for her last night off the cold and no doubt dangerous streets, the inn-keeper's wife, Marge, called her over from behind the bar. Hope flared up in Joanne's heart: perhaps the woman had changed her mind and would want to employ her, after all. Her hope was quickly disposed off however by the pint of beer Marge set on the bar before her, but she was grateful nonetheless. Taking the beer, she sat down at a table in the corner near the front window and for not the first time that day, fought hard to bite back her tears.

Moments later, in walked the man who would change her life.

He was large, looming over his equally tall companion and filling the doorframe as he stepped in from the night. His face was slightly reddened and his blonde hair, tied in the back, was dripping with rain. Both men wore uniforms of the kind Joanne had begun to recognize as that of the Royal Navy. From the gold epaulettes on his shoulders she could tell the blond one was something high up the chain of command, a captain perhaps. The other was younger and didn't carry the gold on his uniform, with long dark-haired tied back in the same fashion as his superior. They settled at the table next to hers and called for wine and something hot to eat.

Joanne had almost finished her beer but made sure to drink the last few sips very slowly. All the while she listened in on the conversation carried on at the table next to hers, and slowly a very different image of a possible near future began to replace the horrible one she had envisioned earlier, while running away from the whorehouses lining Portsmouth's backstreets.

She was no fool, of course. She had read the history books and knew well the stories about the supposedly horrible conditions of life in the old Royal Navy. "Nelson's Navy," she thought, only knowing about the man because of the statue in Trafalgar Square in London, and felt amazement coursing through her veins. Would she ever get used to being in this strange age? Part of her knew that the answer might be yes, as she had been less surprised at things on this day than on her first day here, but she still hoped she wouldn't stay in this time long enough to find out. Still, life in the Navy, she reasoned, could not be worse than having to live on the streets, or alternatively, having to sell her body to stay off them.

There was another problem, something which frightened her enormously when she allowed herself to think on it. What if leaving the Portsmouth dock meant she would somehow lose the connection to her own time, and she would not travel back to it because of that? Or, what if she would travel back while she were at sea, would that mean she would plunge into the ocean in 2005? However horrible both these scenarios were, Joanne found that considering them simply did not do at the moment. She needed to worry about survival first, about here and now, because if she didn't then there would be no way she would ever return home.

At last, nervously fidgeting with her sleeve without noticing it, she abruptly stood up. The chair scraped over the stones loudly enough to attract attention, but the two officers at the table next to her seemed too engrossed in their conversation to notice. Clearing her throat, she softly directer herself to the senior one, the large blonde man. "Sir, excuse me..."

The conversation before her stopped short and a pair of questioning blue eyes fixed on hers. "Yes?"

"Excuse me," she said again, trying hard not to stammer. "I could not help but notice, you are an officer of the Royal Navy sir? You both are?"

"Why yes," the man replied, pleasantly enough, "I am Captain Aubrey and this is Lieutenant Pullings."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance," said the Lieutenant politely.

"It's very nice to meet you, sir," Joanne said, not sure wether a handshake was in order. She decided against the gesture, for these men were obviously high in rank and if she had learned anything in her short time here then it was that the proper formalities and show of respect were of the utmost importance to people of this age. Uncalled for familiarities would definitely not be appreciated, nor accepted.

"My name is Jo," she added, "Jo Thompson." It wasn't a lie. But it was not nearly the truth, either, and she blurted out her next question before she lost her nerve. "Sir, I would like to ask you... I am looking for employment, could you, would you be in need of a, a... someone to work on your ship, by any chance?" Cursing herself quietly for stammering, Joanne suppressed the urge to cross her fingers.

"Well," said Captain Aubrey, looking her over. "As a matter of fact we are some forty hands short of our complement. But you hardly look a seaman, Jo. How old are you?"

Perhaps it was something about her forlorn look, or perhaps it was because the Captain was in a very good mood indeed, as he had just been given the command of a wonderfully weatherly ship and was ready to sail within the week, but at any rate, Aubrey agreed to take her on board as a ship's boy. Jo Thompson was to report to the bosun of the H.M.S. Surprise at dawn the next morning.


End file.
